Backup Articles » costs http://www.backupmyhost.com/blog All you need to know about data backup Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:29:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 What is a Data Backup Strategy? http://www.backupmyhost.com/blog/basics/what-is-a-data-backup-strategy/ http://www.backupmyhost.com/blog/basics/what-is-a-data-backup-strategy/#comments Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:50:13 +0000 George http://www.backupmyhost.com/blog/?p=429

strategy A Data Backup Strategy is a plan, method, or series of tasks for obtaining a specific goal – safe data backups! The main factors in a data backup strategy are the following:

  • Backup medium – The destination backup medium depends on the size of the data being backed up. For smaller amounts of data a low capacity removable drive such as, Pen or Zip drive may be adequate. As the data size increases, you need to have large capacity drives such as, USB external hard drives and for medium to large organizations; a tape drive is usually the backup medium.
  • Location of the backup medium – The backed up data needs to be held in a safe and secure place. With safe location I mean away from fire or water and dangerous materials. For example, backup tapes are damaged by magnetic fields. Remember that sound speakers contain magnets and produce such fields! With secure location I mean a place that stop burglars from stealing the medium. Ideally, the medium is password protected in case a burglar manages to steal your data would find it difficult to recover it! Another important factor is to store the medium in a location away from your live data – an off-site storage location.
  • Frequency of backups – is how often you perform data backups. This depends on how much your data undergo changes and/or major events such as, updating an application or an operating system. A home user may perform a backup once a week while an organization most probably performs daily backups.  While a home user may be better off with a weekly full backup that overwrites the previous week, an organization needs to implement a full – incremental/differential strategy that spans over a month or more.
  • Number of generations to be kept – As an added safety you can keep a number of previous backups before overwriting them with new backup jobs. Although, this might be too expensive in terms of storage costs for home users, an organization would typically keep daily backups for a week, weekly backups for a month and monthly backups for a year.  Also, this may be more complicated with tougher law and regulatory requirements. 
  • Testing the backup jobs with a recovery exercise - one of the most forgotten and neglected factors is to test that the backed up data is actually there! It would be a nightmare to lose a hard drive and your data due to a virus or a fault but it would be catastrophic to discover that your magnetic tapes that were supposed to store the backed up data were in fact blank! A planned recovery procedure must be done on regular basis to ensure that your backed up data can be effectively restored :)

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]]> http://www.backupmyhost.com/blog/basics/what-is-a-data-backup-strategy/feed/ 0 Remote backup management consoles http://www.backupmyhost.com/blog/audit/remote-backup-management-consoles/ http://www.backupmyhost.com/blog/audit/remote-backup-management-consoles/#comments Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:33:44 +0000 George http://www.backupmyhost.com/blog/?p=322


A remote or online backup solution is the way forward for off-site data protection. Due to regulatory compliance some corporations are holding back from going to this direction, however, much work is being made in this area and soon we have providers that will provide such conformity. On the other hand, the majority of SMBs that have no specific regulatory requirements and certainly most households should consider this platform as their main off-site backup solution.console

Nevertheless, SMBs and households should not forget to backup their data locally first and then use a remote storage location as a second means of protection - my advice is:

 

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  1. To perform regular Data backups locally, on some reliable and inexpensive media but most importantly is to use a different storage media other than the local drive.
  2. Then move/archive this data off-site – again using a reliable, secure and economical solution

I have come across a couple of online backup providers that lack comprehensive management tools. When I say comprehensive I mean ample features that allow end users to monitor the backup/restore process and check for errors, costs and edit account details.

Such as, a user-friendly Web-based GUI (graphical user interface) that provides the following information:

  1. That shows and logs the successful completion of backup and restore jobs
  2. For failed jobs one should be able to view a brief but complete explanation of what went wrong in plain English and not a series of error codes
  3. That shows the storage space consumed and the remaining space if the account is limited by space quota. Graphical statistics would give a good overview such as, usage per day, month, etc
  4. Timestamps for the backed up data that will help the end user identify the right data in case a data recovery is needed
  5. A section (tab) with all the billing and payment details without disclosing any critical information
  6. A personal account section where one can change passwords, email address, quota settings if any and other account related settings.

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]]> http://www.backupmyhost.com/blog/audit/remote-backup-management-consoles/feed/ 0 Total Cost of Ownership of Data Backups http://www.backupmyhost.com/blog/basics/total-cost-of-ownership-of-data-backups/ http://www.backupmyhost.com/blog/basics/total-cost-of-ownership-of-data-backups/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:24:38 +0000 George http://www.backupmyhost.com/blog/?p=276 moneyAre online backup and recovery solutions cheaper than the counterpart traditional solutions? Before I deal with this argument I would like to point out a few points: – online backups provide an offsite disaster recovery solution, you can access your data from anywhere given that you have an internet connection and additionally, you will be enjoying the expertise and the scalability of big vendors.

Online backups offer cheaper costs per GB for the same functionality because you only pay for what you use. :) The costs include the storage used, bandwidth consumed and other related services. Data security is based on the latest encryption algorithms and adequate auditing features would place the end-user’s mind at rest!

A typical SMB that generates a full backup of say, 600GB of data would need an initial expense consisting of an entry level LTO-3 storage drive and an entry level server plus a couple of LTO-3 tape cartridges. Such setup would permit the full backup to be completed in about three hours and the need of one IT staff to be present to swop the tapes if compressing the data is not good enough to fit all data on one tape.

The Initial capital or better the total purchase cost for a similar tape solution would be about $3600. Therefore, the initial cost per GB would be of $6 per GB. If we assume that the above mentioned setup would run for a period of three whole years without entering into additional expenses such as, maintenance and repair costs (which is highly unlikely), then the cost per GB would be much lower. However, one would need to include the IT staff, space requirements and electricity expenses into the costs equation.

On the other hand, an online backup solution requires a good and stable internet connection, especially with regards to upload speeds. Various service providers provide services to move the initial large volumes of data through other means and hence, at cheaper rates. However, if an SMB had to implement this solution, it would cost him/her about $360 to transfer the initial 600GB of data which would yield a cost of 0.60c per GB. As already noted, an adequate internet connection is a must since an internet connection with an upload speed of 2Mbps would take a month to upload a full data backup of about 600GB. This may not be practical; however, alternate arrangements can be made with the provider to shift the initial data!

Conclusion: – An online backup solution has a lower TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) when compared to an internal solution.

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]]> http://www.backupmyhost.com/blog/basics/total-cost-of-ownership-of-data-backups/feed/ 0 Wish You and Your Dearest a No Data Loss Year http://www.backupmyhost.com/blog/basics/wish-you-and-your-dearest-a-no-data-loss-year/ http://www.backupmyhost.com/blog/basics/wish-you-and-your-dearest-a-no-data-loss-year/#comments Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:53:25 +0000 chribonn http://www.backupmyhost.com/blog/?p=266 I want to take the opportunity to wish you and your dearest the very best for the forthcoming year. Some places are already referring to the newly hung calendar while others have a few more hours to go before their 2009 almanac would have served its purpose.

Health, good fortune and prosperity are the common form of wishes we bestow upon one another. And since I do not want to break with tradition I would like to bestow them onto you. Yet with all of these there is little we can do to determine the outcome. What destiny has in stock for each and every one of us will be revealed at the appropriate time. Some of the wishes can be even considered to be dangerous. For example I would never suggest to a friend to take on gambling so as to increase her prospects of getting some good fortune.

Yet I can safely wish you a year without any loss of data. The simple trick is to backup your data regularly, ideally in a manner that is automated and does not necessitate you having to remember to do it. If the process is automated there is a great chance that you will succeed in not losing any critical information if your computer takes all the data with it when it dies out.

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